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uddhava Joined: 20 Jan 2005 Posts: 142 Location: Paramdham |
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:43 am Post subject: Evolution |
Discovered: the missing link that solves a mystery of evolution Alok Jha, science correspondent Thursday April 6, 2006 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1747926,00.html Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago. Palaeontologists have said that the find, a crocodile-like animal called the Tiktaalik roseae and described today in the journal Nature, could become an icon of evolution in action - like Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds. As such, it will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power. Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, said: "Our emergence on to the land is one of the more significant rites of passage in our evolutionary history, and Tiktaalik is an important link in the story." Tiktaalik - the name means "a large, shallow-water fish" in the Inuit language Inuktikuk - shows that the evolution of animals from living in water to living on land happened gradually, with fish first living in shallow water. The animal lived in the Devonian era lasting from 417m to 354m years ago, and had a skull, neck, and ribs similar to early limbed animals (known as tetrapods), as well as a more primitive jaw, fins, and scales akin to fish. The scientists who discovered it say the animal was a predator with sharp teeth, a crocodile-like head, and a body that grew up to 2.75 metres (9ft) long. "It's very important for a number of reasons, one of which is simply the fact that it's so well-preserved and complete," said Jennifer Clack, a paleontologist at Cambridge University and author of an accompanying article in Nature. Scientists have previously been able to trace the transition of fish into limbed animals only crudely over the millions of years they anticipate the process took place. They suspected that an animal which bridged the gap between fish and land-based tetrapods must have existed - but, until now, there had been scant evidence of one. "Tiktaalik blurs the boundary between fish and land-living animal both in terms of its anatomy and its way of life," said Neil Shubin, a biologist at the University of Chicago, and a leader of the expedition which found Tiktaalik. The near-pristine fossil was found on Ellesmere Island, Canada, which is 600 miles from the north pole in the Arctic Circle. Scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University led several expeditions into the inhospitable icy desert to search for the fossils. The find is the first complete evidence of an animal that was on the verge of the transition from water to land. "The find is a dream come true," said Ted Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences. "We knew that the rocks on Ellesmere Island offered a glimpse into the right time period and were formed in the right kinds of environments to provide the potential for finding fossils documenting this important evolutionary transition." When Tiktaalik lived, the Canadian Arctic region was part of a land mass which straddled the equator. Like the Amazon basin today, it had a subtropical climate and the animal lived in small streams. The skeleton indicates that it could support its body under the force of gravity. Farish Jenkins, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University said: "This represents a critical early phase in the evolution of all limbed animals, including humans - albeit a very ancient step." Tiktaalik also gives biologists a new understanding of how fins turned into limbs. Its fin contains bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals. "Most of the major joints of the fin are functional in this fish," Professor Shubin said. "The shoulder, elbow and even parts of the wrist are already there and working in ways similar to the earliest land-living animals." Dr Clack said that, judging from the fossil, the first evolutionary transition from sea to land probably involved learning how to breathe air. "Tiktaalik has lost a series of bones that, in fishes, covers the gill region and helps to operate the gill-breathing mechanism," she said. "The air-breathing mechanism it had would have been elaborated and having lost the series of bones that lies between the head and the shoulder girdle means it's got a neck, it can raise its head more easily in order to gulp the air. "The flexible robust limbs appear to be connected with pushing the head out of the water to breathe the air." H Richard Lane, director of sedimentary geology and palaeobiology at the US National Science Foundation, said: "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil Rosetta stones for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone - fish to land-roaming tetrapods." A cast of the fossil goes on display at the Science Museum in South Kensington central London today.
uddhava Joined: 20 Jan 2005 Posts: 142 Location: Paramdham |
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:44 am Post subject: |
Does anyone here not believe in evolution?
howiemac Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 142 Location: Scotland |
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:07 am Post subject: |
uddhava wrote:
Does anyone here not believe in evolution?
I don't - not as science has it. I see it like this: We evolve physically while devolving spiritually. We start out with hologram-like subtle bodies, naturally soul conscious, and devolve into body conscious corporeal creatures. It is only at the half way point in the cycle that we take our physical "skins" - these physical bodies will have evolved, much as science indicates, becoming more complex as they become more material and less spiritual (there is always a balance of spirit and matter in everything - it is like yin/yang - over time the balance moves to more matter less spirit). There will (obviously) be no fossil record of subtle bodies - so science only gets half the picture (as always) Then, once we have our physical bodies, the process reverses, in the natural way of any cycle, and we evolve spiritually (as we are doing now), while our bodies devolve. At a certain point in our spiritual evolution (could be very soon - but probably not quite as soon as the BKs claim!) we will cast off our skins and become once again soul-conscious angelic beings. It is like breathing in and out - the endless rythm of life, of cycles - not the straight-line upward trend hypothesised by the scientists. This philosophy is in line with all ancient wisdom on the subject - pre-Hindu Vedic, Buddhist, Hermes, Plato, occultists, you name it. Science operates with a blindfold on by denying the spiritual dimension - the life force.
uddhava Joined: 20 Jan 2005 Posts: 142 Location: Paramdham |
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:25 am Post subject: |
howiemac wrote:
There will (obviously) be no fossil record of subtle bodies - so science only gets half the picture (as always)
OK but allowing that science does not have the full picture do you also say that the part that science does have is incorrect for example one species evolving into another? I mean would you say that this has happened in all species including humans, in other species but not humans or not at all?
ex-london Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 131 |
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 12:23 pm Post subject: |
howiemac wrote:
There will (obviously) be no fossil record of subtle bodies - so science only gets half the picture (as always).
I can imagine the editors of The National Enquirer / Fortean Times are faking up a fossil of an angel as we speak ... ex-l
howiemac Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 142 Location: Scotland |
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 2:22 pm Post subject: |
uddhava wrote:
OK but allowing that science does not have the full picture do you also say that the part that science does have is incorrect for example one species evolving into another? I mean would you say that this has happened in all species including humans, in other species but not humans or not at all?
i guess yes - all species including humans - but i am no expert on the subject - i am more interested in the evolution of the human consciousness..
uddhava Joined: 20 Jan 2005 Posts: 142 Location: Paramdham |
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:34 pm Post subject: |
howiemac wrote:
i am no expert on the subject - i am more interested in the evolution of the human consciousness..
OK but I think the two dimensions of this world - material and spiritual - must both be acknowledged. The two are not separate - scientific truth clearly impacts on the spiritual dimension. For example science tells us that it is very unlikely that the world is only 5000 years old. So in terms of spiritual life, in one sense it doesn't matter how old the world is, but in another sense it does matter hugely whether or not the world is 5000 years old because of the implications concerning the integrity of BK or other religious knowledge. Similarly in one sense it doesn't matter whether or not we evolved from lower species but in another sense it does - ie because religious knowledge should not be based on a scientific scenario that is not true. In other words the scientific truth, whatever that might be, clearly has great implications for your main interest of the evolution of human consciousness. Of course this reconciling science and religion thing has become a big problem in the last few centuries. Some people think that the Christian book of Genesis is about the evolution of human consciousness while others think it is about science and that therefore Adam and Eve must be historical people.
uddhava Joined: 20 Jan 2005 Posts: 142 Location: Paramdham |
Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 5:35 pm Post subject: |
I am not interested in science as such - I have no idea how an engine works or how an aeroplane stays in the air - but am interested in the science - religion thing, the origins of life etc. Anyway, I am told we are on a spinning ball floating in space. Far out man.
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